Tuesday, July 22, 2014

Reason is not part of the patriarchy

(note: this post is part of a series on why feminism should embrace the clash of ideas. It can be read in isolation, but would probably be more thoroughly understood in context. Go here for hyperlinks to all posts in this series)

Feminist Argument #5: Open debate
is itself part of the patriarchy, because the veneration of reason and logic as
superior means of knowing than emotion is merely a tool to marginalize and
ridicule women associated with those traits.

I have only encountered this
argument at the
extremes of the feminist movement, and I desperately hope it remains there.
Whereas a prior generation of feminists sought only to remove the association
between emotionalism and femininity, this new argument seeks to remove the “stigma”
around emotional reactions at all, even in places which were formerly thought
to require the use of unclouded reason and abstract logic. What’s so good about
reason anyway, it asks? Humans are creatures of emotion, and it’s unnatural to attempt
to divorce ourselves from it. Just because ones arguments are more rational, it
concludes, does not mean they are right or just, so we should diminish the
importance of rationality in our discussions.

If this thinking ever catches on, I fear my differences with
feminism will become irreconcilable.

To attack reason is to attack the entire endeavor of
comparing ideas by proxy, because without it there is no means to evaluate the ideas
we compare. Without the guide of logic, debate is just a bunch of people chaotically
shouting at one another. And to attack debate is to attack the virtue of free
speech altogether, for who needs alternate viewpoints if there’s nothing to be
gained by considering them? It reduces feminism – once a rationally defensible layering of sourced ideas – to a self-sustaining, quasi-religious dogma of
circular logic.

I disagree fervently with the notion that free speech is
part of “the patriarchy” we rightly fight. But even if I’m wrong about that,
the implication to me is not that free speech must go – it’s that not all of
the patriarchy must be torn down. Masculine or not (and I think it’s not) freedom
of thought is the foundation and guarantor for all other freedoms. It precedes
them in order and supersedes them in importance. Free speech trumps the right
to bear arms. Free speech trumps the right to own property. Free speech trumps
civil rights and the right to a living wage or healthcare or whatever other
rights you want to invent. And yes, free speech trumps feminism, because
without it, feminism – along with every other ideology under the sun – is a
meaningless mockery of a discourse, a sham collection of pre-approved notions
masquerading as the battle tested product of reasoned thought. I could not
endorse such an illusion of knowledge. I’d rather drink
hemlock.